PAIN AND SUFFERING ARE FROM GOD AND HE WANTS THEM BACK

There are people in this world who live every day in pain.  It varies from person to person, but it is still pain.  For some of these valiant souls the pain that they suffer would debilitate many of us who are presently reading these lines.  Some people go to work daily while suffering the discomfort of nearly failed kidneys.  Some do the same while staving off the effects of 500 blood sugar levels.  There are those who have incorrigible back pain caused by some other condition that robs their body of the symmetrical balance that it requires to be comfortable.  Finally, so as not to prolong this enumeration, there are those who have to go through life with mental and emotional deficiencies.

A few short weeks ago, my loving spouse and I participated in a funeral Mass that was very meaningful to both of us.

It was for a 31 year old Down Syndrome woman whose mother is professionally close to us.  I am writing this because I could not stop thanking God for filling the church for this celebration. Small church, but wall to wall people, 350 according to my count, from a stuffed up choir loft!  God's little ones sure have a way of dragging us behind them, don't they?  I kept remembering what my Internet preacher brother, Reef Lector,  wrote about his daughter Laurie some time ago. In the case about which I am musing here,  we had learned just shortly before her dying, that she was not well.  We also learned about her personal spiritual relationship with God.  She was so close to God that it did not frighten her when she said "No" to dialysis.  Some few days later she went home.  Five days after that she filled the church.  I was glad to be there.  It was a moment of high spirituality for me and for Belle, my spouse..  

It somehow reminded me of the last time I celebrated the Holy Mass.  It was a funeral for a seven year old boy.  He too filled the church with more Protestants than I ever thought could fit into a Catholic church for any reason.  Baptists, every last one.  This was a military child who suffered bravely before going to the bosom of Abraham.  We had a big church in El Cajon, CA, and it was full.

The father was Catholic and the mother Baptist.  You should have heard the singing...they were rocking the place.  The whole thing lasted for nearly two hours and we still had to go to the cemetery.  The cemetery was almost too small!  As we were hugging and wiping our eyes I found myself being hugged by Mama and when the squeeze got a little looser she said from the depths of her heart, "I'll never be Catholic, but I will carry this to the grave in the happy corner of my heart."

I left there and started my journey into the future from LAX six hours later.

I remember my father.  From the time he was still a pre-teen lad he was in pain. He had broken his leg in a winter sledding accident.  The family was financially incapable to have a doctor intervene in the setting of the leg.  The lad contracted a case of pneumonia during the setting period of the leg.  The infection got into the bone, leaving the leg nearly two inches shorter than the one on the other side.  The resulting disequilibrium caused skeletal pain that was always present. Despite it all, the man led a normal life.  He never graduated from high school, but at age 35 he passed the state exams to qualify as a tool engineer - on his one and only try.  

He was a holy man.  He never suffered alone.  He walked the Way of the Cross every single day side by side with Jesus.  He was rewarded with a sudden death at the ripe old age of 47 years.

This past Saturday I presided over the Celebration of the Memorial for a dear aunt of mine who died at the age of 88.  She endured many different sorts of pain during her last few years.  She shared her journey with God and she shared it with her loving son and daughter-in-law.  Through it all, the art that she created lives on behind her.  The love that she shared is still shaking those that she left behind.

At that Memorial service some of the siblings of our dear cousin David shared the suffering of their brother who had just died in Idaho, 1,100 miles away.  I spoke to two of them and they are happy that they had participated in their brother's preparation for his departure from here into Eternal Life.  His suffering was intense, but they all knew that is was a shared reality, both physical and earthly, spiritual and heavenly.  

Those of you who are familiar with this blog know that I am not afraid of death.  I am not afraid of pain, chronic or otherwise. When I see people die in the presence of God and in the presence of God as presented to the dying person by and through loving family members I am not moved to tears of sadness.  Dying is a spiritual exercise.  We learn that from the Gospel.  It is there that we hear the warning, "Stay ready."  I once heard a priest who was talking to a church full of simple villagers in a country far, far away, "To stay ready, practice every night. Tell God that it's OK of you don't wake up.  When you wake up thank God sincerely for the new day and tell him that you are ready now and will be again as you lay down to sleep."  So, I do that every day too.  

Finally, I say, remember the last words of the Ave Maria, "...pray for us now and at the hour of our death."  

If we all did that we wouldn't have to cry at funerals.

SUFFERING -- AN OPEN LETTER -- A CALL TO SACRIFICE

To my dear brothers and sisters, branches of the Great Dion/Bachand tree that God planted in Zenon Park and is now flowering in many corners of the world.
It is a moment of reality for all of us of our generation, the grandchildren of Eugene "Big Red" and Ora.
This is an open letter to you all, and I write it in full conciousness of my God given gift as the first born of our generation.  I hope that I don't offend you in the following paragraphs.  It is not my intention to offend anyone but to support, encourage, enlighten, comfort, accompany and stand quietly by in my own state of awe, respect and meditation at the plan of God as it unfolds before us along the path to eternal glory.

There are but few of us who have had the challenge to accompany a loved one through long periods of suffering through the deterioration of health.  The great majority of us have experienced the slap of sudden death snapping our hearts into a dark hole of emptiness.  Some of us even pray for that same manner of departure for ourselves.  I for one pray for that every day.  I, more than most of you, have accompanied many people to their grave.  I, more than most of you, have accompanied families and friends through the throes of watching loved ones spend what seemed to be endless time on the threshold between here and there.  I have talked, preached and written much about death and dying.  Very, very little of it to you.
Well, enjoy it, this is it. :-)

For those of you who don't know, I will tell you that I have lasted for 77.25 years so far.  That sounds like George Carlin, doesn't it.  Since this is the first time that I have been this old, I can't tell you if I feel my age or not.  I can tell you that I know very well how I felt at 35.  I also can tell you how I felt at 74.  At 35 I was still kicking ass no matter how tall the adversary was.  At 74 I spent 3 months in a wheel chair.  Which is good because then no one could kick my ass.  As it stands now, I can get kicked again but the only kicking I can do is with a sharp pencil.  So now you know.

At the present, I have been visiting people whom I know who are really sick.  I also got the news about David Dion, son of Alcide and Betty and the oldest brother of Deanna, who happens to be the first born of Al and Betty. David is one sweet guy and there he is, not really old according to 21st century standards, but really sick.  Veronica his wife has been sick and seems to be a little better now.  Then, down goes ol' David.  So that got me to thinking about us Dions and the way we get to the Pearly Gates.  I didn't look it up, but here's what I found off the top of my head:
Long sufferers:
Grace Dion married to DeGray
Jeanine Dion, my sister
Ora Dion, old age
Edward Dion, Alzheimer's, younger brother to Grace
Don Dion, the "Baby of the family"
"Hadjr" DeGray, still here, but suffering

Quick exits:
Cecile Dion, complications after childbirth
Ray Dion, here today and gone today
Norma Dion, ditto
Al Dion, ditto
Elna DeGray, Murphy, Grace's daughter, here today and gone today
Melina Dion, my mother, ditto
Harley DeGray, ditto, Elna's father

Unknown:
Normand Dion

Either way, someone suffers and so I just had to see what I had written about suffering in comparison with what I had written about death.
What I came up with was this, mainly:
http://nocryingatmyfuneral.blogspot.com/2012/02/value-of-suffering.html

I looked for that after I had written this to my sister Emélie (I always put the accent when I'm serious).  Now, I write it to you.

"Thank you for the update.  I appreciate the news.  We continue to accompany him (David) and the family in our prayers.  I pray that as a family we can hear the voice of God with hearts of loving unity during moments that can carry a lot of contradiction.

"Suffering is not just physical.  At times like this it becomes clear to us that suffering is also an emotional community reality.  It is at times like this when we either appreciate the truth that the suffering of Jesus, the Innocent one, is shared in the suffering of His human family, saints or sinners.  When His suffering visits us that is the moment when we know that He meant it when He told us to pick up our cross and follow Him.  (Matthew, 16;24) It is in moments of great suffering that we know that suffering is not a punishment for our weaknesses.  It is an honor given to those whom God judges to have the courage to share in the Sacrifice of Jesus.  It is a glorification of our faith that God uses to pair us with His only Son so that His suffering, lived by us, is our part in the Divine Sacrifice that He offered for the salvation of all.  After all, the suffering is not ours to own.  Like everything else, it is His.  It is  given to us to share for the eternal good of His people, in whom we are all included.  I pray that we all have the Grace to walk to Calvary, heads and hearts held high filled with the courage to be able to say to those who weep, "Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children." (Luke 23;28)

My personal prayer is that each and every one of us, God's children all, can accept our responsibility in the act of eternal salvation, not only our own but that of all God's family, from the closest to Him to the farthest from Him.  At no time during our lives are we so involved in the work of God as when He calls upon us to suffer as His Son did, not for ourselves, but for the Communion of Saints.

I offer one final thought.  Some of the sharpest, crushing, stretching, grinding and wringing suffering that we may be called upon to share with God will come at a time when we know, or think, that we are still far from death's door.  When I thought I was going to die, suffering was assuaged by the thought that the end wasn't that far away.  It was then that I thought of my sister Jeanine and my God-mother Grace who suffered for years.  I thought of my father's chronic pain and the fact that he knew that it was not a life-threatening condition.  I thought of many widows I have known who had to face life with young children and had no gainful source of income.  

I presently think of people I know who have psychoses and/or neuroses to live with.  In their calm and lucid moments, these souls have plenty of suffering, wondering if they will ever get to be "normal."  I think of the mothers who kept offspring that came to them as a result of a violent act against them; I think of the families who have semi-formed children as a result of taking Thalidomide and I often think about a couple of very special families who are well known to and admired by me and the lives that lead.  

Yes, you all, suffering is not easy, but it is also not intolerable to those who know where it comes from and where it leads.  We all have our sheltering olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We can hug that special tree and talk to God from there and thank Him for trusting us with the hardest of His missions - that of the Suffering Servant.

Yes, I pray that we all have the grace to live this calling with noble, faith driven courage.  

Me, 

From my High Horse ...

Used to be a pulpit ... 

I had to run the course

When the pain really hit.

I learned a lot then

From the Book of Life.

I thought that I knew 

Enough to get by.

I was shaken and taught

that my "enough" was aught

and that all I had to get by

was call to God to come nigh

since on my own

I was wracked to the bone

from inside and out

from the left to the right

I had nothing but gout

and no strength to fight.

It was then that I grew

Into the insight of WHY.

In me then was the Passion of Christ.

He and I had a long talk.

I learned then how light is my cross

Since the road that I walk

With Him as we talk,

Doesn't point to a loss.

And please, at my funeral there is no crying allowed!

VALUE OF SUFFERING

There was an interesting thought that crept into my consciousness today.  I read that some one on a religious Internet site asked the question, "Is it right to ask God to cure my suffering?"  You have to admit that this is not your ordinary cute little challenging question such as makes the rounds on the Internet now and then.  You know the kind of question I mean.  The famous question about why we "get into an automobile but get on a bus."  No.  This is not a George Carlin question.  This is a real one coming from a spiritually alert person.   Not that I am saying that Carlin was not a spiritually alert person.   The reason why the question intrigues me is that if I were suffering I would not be shy about turning to God and asking Him to get me out of the situation.  This is a question that could only come from a Christian, more than likely a Catholic one at that.  But is is intriguing.  Why would anyone think that suffering is a morally proper state to live in?  Why would someone think that it would be sinful to wish to be relived of suffering?   I think I know why.   I do have some ideas that I will put on the table after I make a couple of short points.
~Suffering is not synonymous with pain.  My father lived for some 40 years with daily pain.  He led a fruitful life.  In fact, I saw him truly suffer for one whole year, one time, but not from what was causing him the pain.  He had contracted Rheumatic fever and it was excruciating.  Not from the pain, but from the forced inactivity.   Rheumatic fever is a very dangerous illness.
~I have a very exciting and fiery case of gout.  Since the age of  thirty-two I have endured this painful condition. I've never missed a day's work because of it.  I have it in just about every joint known to man and woman, and I suppose, God too.  Two years ago I was flat on my back for a couple of months.  True, for a while the pain was "killing" me.  I was suffering more from the situation that I was in than the pain.  I want you all to know that I prayed that I would walk through that valley and get high enough up on the sunny side of the hill to see something toward the future.  I did.  I am convinced that God did it.  He provided me with a loving community of generous people to help me through the valley of darkness.  
I think that the big difference between pain and suffering is that suffering is communitarian.  It affects the whole environment.  The pain of suffering is not necessarily physical.  In some cases it attacks your wallet more than your body.  In many cases it affects your identity as it relates to your place in the world.  I was in a wheel chair for about ten or twelve weeks and I have to say that I would have swapped an extra dose of bodily pain for freedom from that Satanical instrument of torture.
We have a very good example of the difference between suffering and pain in the Gospel of Luke.  The story of the rich man and the poor Lazarus.  The poor man lingered and loitered around the rich man's table to snag what he could falling from the table, despite the avaricious behavior of the rich man.  He even was satisfied to let the dogs lick his pullulating skin lesions.  He died and went to Heaven.  The rich man went to Hell.  There he suffered.  And how!  We never hear about the poor man's state of mind.  All we know is that he was not a very healthy individual.  
The people whom we see suffering in the Gospel are those who have not yet met Jesus or who have met Him and rejected him.  We have to believe that the Pharisees, as religiously fervent as they were had to be extremely uncomfortable around Him.  The Sadduccees even worse.  
Consider Judas.  He suffered so badly that he did himself in.
That brings me to the reason why it is perfectly correct to pray to be delivered from suffering.  It is, briefly, because in that prayer, we meet Jesus.  We humans relate to the pain of Jesus.  We wonder how He could have lived though it all for so long.  Actually, the physical torture was nothing compared to the centuries of rejection that the Father, Son and Spirit had undergone at the hands of the Chosen People to that point.  It is because of that personally insulting rejection that Jesus was suffering.  It is because He is the only One who knows the depth of that suffering and has lived it in His divinity that He can save us from committing that very sin.  It is therefore easy for me to say that the value of suffering lies in the fact that it puts us in the same situation as Jesus was.  This unity between Him and us is so intimate that our suffering becomes His and we are delivered from owning it.  When we unite ourselves with Jesus on this very intimate level, our suffering is offered for the spiritual good of others.  In this intimate relationship, physical pain, though present, becomes unimportant.
It is through the example of Jesus that we know that suffering is a communitarian reality.  He did not do it alone.  He did not do it for me or for anybody else personally.  He did it for the People.  He did it for the human race.  He did it for the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, i.e., for us all.  He did it in public.  He did it in the main street of the Holy City.  The City over which He had shed bitter tears.  The City that had killed Prophets.  When we suffer, it is not we who suffer.  It is we and Jesus.  When it is WE and JESUS, the pain is secondary.
So that is where the question is born.  "If we are so close to Jesus in suffering, shouldn't it be wrong to pray for it to stop?"  The answer is no for three good reasons.
ONE.  Even Jesus prayed for it to stop.  Remember?  It didn't, but He suffered in the presence of His Father.  Just as we suffer in His presence for His Will to be done.
TWO.  Among the scoffers and the indifferent passers-by there were those who were impressed by the strength of the person being tortured.  Jesus even won one of them over.  That's the goal.  That's our goal too.  But we can only get it if we are suffering in and with the Father, Son and Spirit.
THREE.  When He resurrected, look at all the unfinished business He cleaned up.  It's after He suffered that He told the Apostles to get going and to spread the word.  When we are delivered from our suffering, Jesus knows that we will do everything in our capability to spread the word.


Finally, suffering is good because it teaches the one who goes through it with Jesus and comes out the other side to pitch in and try harder to be a more faithful and righteous disciple.    In my case, this part was done for me.  My loving and devoted spouse, Belle, promised God that if He got me through it, she and I would offer the rest of our lives working for Him.  Now you know why I don't want anybody crying at my funeral.

It Doesn't Take Long To Get Old

It Doesn't Take Long To Get Old
By Paul Dion, STL

It has been nearly two years since I last came to you with my spiritual musings. While I was away, I dedicated myself to earning a living the only way I know how. HARD WORK. As it turns out, Mother Nature gave me a lesson in prudence and common sense. 72 year old people can't do what 32 year old people can.  Here is my first meditation in a long time.

I thought I would share my experience of getting old quickly, not necessarily graciously. In fact my sons tell me that grace, respect and elegance were the least of the qualities that shaped my "getting old" experience. Now that it is behind me and now that I am officially old, and still recuperating from the physical and emotional torture, I will tell you the story before I go back to work in the secular world.

June of 2008 was a nasty month. I was let go from a nice job for fabricated reasons, and in favor of a less competent replacement. Never one to let management gloat, I went out and found work inside of a month. It was a different world. I went from teaching, writing and planning Church events to driving an airport shuttle van six and one-half days a week, never less than fourteen hours on the full days.

Then, Providence smiled on me and a fellow parishioner offered me a job opportunity in a medical transportation company. I passed all the tests (including the physicals) and all the interviews. I liked the people in the management and I liked the drivers who were soon to become my colleagues. So, in January of 2009 I went from driving fourteen to 18 hours a day to just ten or twelve, and those were the "long" days. I was thrilled to learn that Sundays were non-working days. Talk about hitting the jackpot.

On January 7, 2009, I hit the road for my training period with the senior partner of the firm. After a couple days I received my official employee identification badge. My number? 007. A license to kill! At the time little did I know that I would be the victim.

In the middle of the second week of training, I soloed. I was off and running. I weighed 170 pounds. I know that I made at least my share of dumb rookie mistakes. The management corrected those that they could and learned to live with the rest. I passed the probationary period test (6 months) and was kept on. The company was growing, so the decision to keep me was perhaps made a little bit easier because of that. It was during this growth period that the first customer with pre-dawn needs to be picked-up and brought to early morning dialysis treatments engaged our services.

I quickly volunteered to do that work. I had two reasons: a] at my age (72), getting up at 2:30 AM won't be hard, and b] by doing what no one else wants to do, I'll have job security. You oldies who are reading this, know exacty what I mean. So I did it. Soon we went from having one or two such passengers to having four or five or more. Six days a week we had a van (mostly mine) enjoying having all the city streets quasi empty and all the traffic lights on the major thoroughfares green at 4:00 AM. It was fun. Plus, most passengers are a lot more loquacious at 4:00 AM than they are later in the day.

I did this until February 6, 2010. On Monday, February 8, I called in sick because I could hardly move from a generalized gout attack. I sat around the house all day. I crawled around the house in pain for two days. My mother-in-law died on February 12, in San Diego. We went. I could not drive. Belle, (my beloved spouse) fresh from surgery, drove. We viewed her mother before the morticians took possession of the body. She stayed in San Diego and our elder son drove me back to Kaiser Urgent Care in Riverside.

I was getting old fast. After one hour, the doctors confined me to the hospital. I had to be wheeled to my bed. I will spare you the physical, mental and emotional adventures of my stay. Five days later I would be discharged from the hospital, a frail invalid of 132 pounds who could not do anything for himself. Now, that is old. Two weeks before my 73rd birthday. Did I get old graciously? Let me quote my son; "Pa, you must be the first person ever to get expelled from a hospital." (February 18, 2010)

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"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." (Job 1; 21)
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I remember some of the thoughts that I had while in the hospital, most of them while I was lying on my back convinced that I would not be able to walk out on my own steam. I would say to myself, "What am I doing here? Is this what it is to be in the hospital? Why am I here, there isn't anything that can be done to make me better?"

Then I would turn my head and see my elder son, sitting in vigilance by the bedside. He was the priest that God had given me for the first three days of my stay. I would say to myself, "There are no words of gratitude in human language to express the emotions that I feel in seeing my son offering the sacrifice of love that I am presently witnessing." In the moments of lucidity that I had (very few over a period of more than ten days) I would tell him the same thing.

When his younger brother came to replace him, I told him the same thing. He turned it back on me and said, "You expect me to believe you while you're 'out of it'?" I actually remember laughing weakly at that.

Over the years I have suffered fiery physical pain from chronic gout. It was never as vicious as what incapacitated me during February and March of 2010. Over the same period of time I have learned the truth about incapacitation and pain. It's not mine to own, it's not mine to keep. Job, the foreigner, and Jesus, the God-obeying, Spirit-filled Jew, both knew that. Our human difficulties are our gift/sacrifice to God. Our bodies are the altar of the sacrifice where pain is offered to God so that he can use it to bring someone else's life closer to His.

We say that pain and suffering are part of life. True. I firmly believe that pain and suffering are natural and supernatural realities of human life. Just like the grain of wheat has to die before growing and producing; just as the lamb has to die before becoming the protein and sustenance of other life, the part of our death that we feel in pain and suffering belongs to God so that He can harvest it and sustain another of His disciples in righteousness.

It has been about one month now that I have been perceptibly becoming more and more "normal", physically and emotionally. The doctors have been doing marvels. My indomitable competitive nature has not been shy about twisting God's arm to make Him make me a stronger missionary for His cause. I tell Him, "You kept me alive, so now make me better so that I can work for you. I don't mind the pain, take it, it's all yours. Oh, by the way, any time you want to invite me to take a walk with you back to the Garden of Eden, I'm ready. Just say the word." (Read Genesis, chapter 5, verses 23 and 24. I pray for that grace every day.)

I leave you with the simple thoughts expressed above. I hope that they will serve as food for thought. Low calorie, low cholestrol and sugar-free, of course.

I have gone back to the things I like. Sunday RCIA sessions for adults, writing for ParishWorld.net and preparing 90 minute conferences for adults on Biblical and Theological topics. Finally, I am hoping to be back at work in a week or two. I crossed the Red Sea into Old Age as a grouch. I am working at polishing my attitude and regaining my sense of humor. I count on you to pray for me and to refrain from crying at my funeral.